


Sticks and Stones

by RoseByAnyOtherName (badxwolfxrising)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 16:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3495668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badxwolfxrising/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a pack of racist drunks insults the Doctor and Martha, he doesn't take it sitting down. Set during "Blink", when the Doctor and Marth are stranded without the TARDIS. Warning for some racial epithets in the context of the story; the 1960s were a time of high racial tensions in the UK.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sticks and Stones

Martha supposed there were worse times and places to be stranded than England in the 1960s, but considering she was a black girl travelling with a white man at a time when racial tensions were peaking it certainly wasn’t easy on either of them. It was also nothing new to her, unfortunately. It wasn’t as though everyone in her own time were a raging racist or xenophobe, but she had grown up in London, not under a rock, and had been the subject of racist jokes or remarks on occasion. Here though, it happened on an almost daily basis. She bit her tongue, held her head high, and just ignored it. She had learned to let it just roll off her back, because the comments were always based in ignorance and fear. The Doctor, on the other hand...well, he had no patience for bigots.

They had been walking back from the library together that day, and as it was raining they were walking hand-in-hand under a shared umbrella. Outside of a pub, several guys stood smoking and joking with each other, but their laughter died when Martha and the Doctor walked by.

“Race traitor!” one man called.

The Doctor’s grip on her hand tightened, almost imperceptibly.

“Why don’t you get back on the banana boat and go home?” another sneered.

The Doctor stopped walking and stood still. “Doctor...” Martha started to warn, but something in his eyes made her stop.

“Oi mate, why don't you try dating inside your own species?” another one shouted, and Martha almost had to laugh at the irony of that one. She knew they were inferring that people of her skin color resembled primates, but she wasn't taking the bait on that. Technically, she and the Doctor _weren't_ the same species...and there was no one of his species besides himself

He was clenching and unclenching his fists now, and grinding his teeth with the effort of his silence. They were the only ones going down this particular alley way right now, and there were no witnesses. It was best they just forget it and move along. For a moment, Martha thought they might just keep walking, but then things escalated.

“N****r lover!”

It didn't matter how many times she'd heard it before, Martha cringed at the epithet as it was flung carelessly at them, but the Doctor's eyes had gone almost black and she knew there was no turning back now.

“Martha, you'll have to excuse me for a moment,” he said calmly, handing her the umbrella he'd been holding over their heads. He shrugged his suit jacket off and handed her that, too, although it was a bit awkward trying to hold it up off the ground and keep the umbrella upright, too. As he strode back towards the group of heckling men, he was unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves.

“Oh look, Jigaboo's fella has something to say about it,” one of the guys spoke out menacingly.

“Apologize to the lady for using that language,” the Doctor demanded, his voice dangerously soft.

“Apologize? How about you quit pullin' my peter and you and your little BLACK BIRD go running along. Unless of course you want trouble,” the smallest of the men said, flicking open a pocket knife.

“Trouble? No, I don't want any trouble. That's why you're going to apologize to the lady. Now,” the Doctor said, his gaze unflinching.

“Doctor, no!” Martha cried as she saw the flash of metal moving towards him. What occurred next though happened so fast that she couldn't tell you exactly how things had progressed, just that one moment the drunkard was rushing the Doctor with a knife, and the next he was laying on his back, groaning, one Converse-clad foot planted firmly on his chest. Suddenly, the rest of his mates weren't so brave-they backed up, but did not disperse, obviously curious to see how this would play out. Compared to the man he had just laid out, the Doctor looked like a wet noodle, but in spite of the tussle not a hair on his head seemed out of place. It would almost be comical if the same man hadn't threatened the Doctor with a knife only moments earlier.

“So, what was that you were saying about myself and the lady?” the Doctor asked, rocking his heel just hard enough to remind the heckler who was in charge.

Red-faced, the man just glowered back at the Doctor, who smiled at him the way you might smile at someone who's just handed you a basket full of spiders. “Nothing? Nothing at all, really? Are you sure it wasn't 'I'm sorry' you were aiming for?”

The bigger man lunged for the Doctor's leg, trying to throw him off balance, but the Doctor was bracing his hands against the other man's shoulder and head. In the distance, Martha could hear police sirens. This had escalated, all too quickly. It was time to go.

“Doctor, just leave him,” she pleaded.

“Not until he apologizes,” he replied, determined..

The rest of the hecklers must have drummed up their courage or decided that the three of them still outnumbered the skinny bloke in the suit, because they picked that moment to gang up on the Doctor, with one going after either of his arms to hold him back while the third helped the heckler to stand. When he did, he unceremoniously clocked the Doctor in the face three times in rapid succession. Martha gasped, hearing the sound of his head rolling back on his neck. For a moment she was worried that he had gotten himself in way over his head, but then he shocked her by doing something completely out of character: arms pinned behind him, he _headbutted_ the burlier man the next time he took a swing. Well...maybe it wasn’t entirely out of character, after all, it was mad. Evidently that was the game ender though, as the other man went down to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

“Come on, let's get out of here,” he said, ignoring the fact that his nose was dripping blood in favor of taking her hand. He regarded the other men disdainfully. “N****r lover. As if it matters either way what color skin you and the people you love have.”

He made sure they were watching when he kissed Martha square on the lips. She knew he’d done it to prove a point, but she melted a little inside anyway, even if it was a bit...metallic.

* * * * *

“Ouch!”

“Well I'm sorry, but no one told you that you had to go playing hero of the day, defending my honor and all. It's the 1960s Doctor...it's just how some people are here. I don't take it personally, and neither should you,” Martha said, stitching the gash over his eye shut. They were back in the safety of their shabby little studio, and the Doctor was sitting on the toilet with Martha perched on the sink next to him. Of all the rooms in the flat (a total of two), this one had the better lighting.

“What sort of friend would I be if I’d let them just keep saying those terrible things about you, about us? he grumbled. “It just wasn’t right.”

“You could’ve gotten both of us in a lot of trouble, physical injuries aside. Remember, this isn’t our world, it’s theirs, and we’re trapped in it for the time being. What would you have done if you’d gotten arrested? What would I have done?” she chided, not unkindly.

“I suppose I did act a bit rash,” he admitted reluctantly. 

“You think?”

“But I just can’t abide by that sort of ignorance and bigotry. You’re brilliant, Martha Jones. That anyone could assume otherwise without getting to know you...well, it just made me mad, that’s all,” he murmured softly, poking at the side of his head, where one of the stray blows had landed.

“Just let it alone, would you?” she said, carefully swatting his hand away from his head. “All things considered Doctor, it could be much worse. I suppose it’s your superior Time Lord healing abilities, but you’d barely know how hard of a beating you’d taken by looking at your injuries. They already look a few days old, and it has been barely been a few hours.”

“Oi! With all due respect, I don’t know that I’d describe that as a hard beating. I laid the other guy out, Martha,” the Doctor reminded her, a tone of indignation in his voice.

“Yes. Yes you did,” she said with a faint smile. Misguided or not, she supposed it had been rather gallant and chivalrous of him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bruise your ego, as well as your face.”

He just stuck his tongue out at her, and God, it wasn’t fair! Even bruised up and bleeding, he was still damn good looking. His right eye had a freshly stitched gash above it, the left eye was bruised and a little bit puffy, his nose had the bruised look of one that had been recently broken, and there was still a dried trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Still, she loved him to the moon and back, and actually, they’d been. He’d kissed her there too, prefacing it with a declaration that it meant nothing. The eternity in seconds it had lasted certainly hadn’t felt like nothing, and Martha still felt dizzy sometimes thinking back on that moment. The Doctor and her had exchanged kisses a couple of times, but it was always wrong; like today. Or the kisses were chaste, like the kisses shared between two people who were just friends. And she wasn’t quite sure what her and the Doctor were, although he had certainly referred to her as a friend earlier in the conversation.

“Are you almost done? I’m starving. Apparently having the crap beaten out of you will do that to a bloke,” he said mildly, before he’d stopped to think about it. “Oh, bollocks.”

Martha decided to give him a pass on that one. “Done,” she said leaning back, making sure all his wounds were cleaned and properly dressed.

“Right, brilliant. You are brilliant, Martha Jones, I’d be lost without you. Now then, the very important matter of dinner is at hand, after which I thought we could sneak into the cinema. Oven chips?”

“Oven chips,” she agreed, thinking that maybe, it wasn’t so bad being stuck in the 1960s after all.


End file.
